A Fourth of July parade in eastern Iowa turned to
mayhem on Sunday when a pair of runaway horses lunged into the crowd
and trampled 24 people, many of them children. At least one person
was killed, and several others were seriously injured.

The chaos took place when two horses pulling a buggy got spooked
and charged into the crowd at the Heritage Day Parade, a decades-old
tradition that attracts thousands to Bellevue, a town of 2,300
people nestled along the Mississippi River. Bellevue’s fire chief,
Chris Roling, said the two horses, both at the rear of the parade,
bumped into one another, knocking one horse’s bridle off and causing
it to bolt, followed by the second horse.

“They took off down the street uncontrollably,” Chief Roling said
in a telephone interview. “They went about six blocks — the horses
and the carriages behind them, running over children and adults
along the parade route.”

“I’ve been doing this 35 years and I’ve never seen anything like
it,” he added.

A spokesman for the Bellevue Police department said Janet Steines,
60, of Springbrook, whose husband was driving the carriage, died
Sunday evening at the University of Iowa Hospital in Iowa City after
she was taken there with injuries from the accident.

About 10,000 people were lined up along the parade route when the
horses made their dash just after 11 a.m. As the runaway horses
galloped through the crowd, a passenger on the buggy was thrown into
the air. Parents grabbed their children and ran, and throngs of
parade-goers screamed and scrambled for cover.

The horses charged ahead for more than a quarter mile until a man
at the front of the parade on a haybine — an antique farm machine
used to gather hay — tried to stop them.

“He turned around and saw the horses coming toward him and he
pulled his unit in front of the horses to slow them down,” Chief
Roling said. “After running into his unit, they ran into a road sign
and then there was a van that got hit. They ran into the side of the
van and finally there were enough bystanders there to help out.”

In addition to the woman who died, another 23 people were
injured, all but two of whom were taken to local hospitals by
ambulance. Among the injured were at least four people in critical
condition — including at least two children - and another five with
“major injuries,” like broken bones, collapsed lungs and head
injuries, Chief Roling said.

Bellevue has only two ambulances, but a dozen additional
ambulances rushed to the town, some from as far as 26 miles away.
About 70 emergency responders arrived as well, and a doctor and
several nurses and paramedics who happened to be in the crowd
watching the parade pitched in.

Chief Roling said this was the first time he could recall any
sort of chaos like this at the parade. As for next year’s event, he
said there was no way he could think of avoiding another mishap of
this nature.

“This is just something that happens that we can’t prevent,” he
said. “It wouldn’t be any different from an accelerator sticking on
a car and running through the crowd.”

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